#they're not late

[reikodoesfanstuff]

Hello, I'm sadly (for you) back on my Durgetash headcannon writing. A lil bit of marriage hc for y'all:

Enver stirred to a dark room. Only a faint glow of moonlight behind the heavy curtains let him know it must still be early... or late. His hand wanders to the warm, empty spot beside him in bed. Enver sighs gently and raises to his elbows, despite his human sight preventing him from seeing anything in the pitch black room.

"Where are you sneaking off to at this hour?" he asks to the still room. In the silence, every rustle too loud. The brush of fabric, the creak of the bed, his own heart beat. There's no sound from them but only a brief moment's pause before he feels the bed dip next to him, and a warm hand finds his cheek. His assassin ran their thumb along his lips ever so faintly, as if thinking of silencing his questions with a kiss.

"There's something I have to do before today. Something I have to finish." they say gently, almost tentatively.

"You mean someone." it's not a question and he says it with a touch of amusement. He takes the hand on his cheek in his own, feeling the simple metal band around their ring finger on his lips in a light kiss. "Does it have to be today? Right now? Surely whoever it is will still be alive after tomorrow."

The calloused hand slides from his own as they stood, leaving only the cold in their wake.

"Yes. It must be today. I just... have to secure... this." warmth radiates from their hand as they press it to his chest, just above his heart. He chuckled. They were more than secure in Gortash's calculations but if one more death would satisfy his little Bhaalspawn, so be it.

"Fine. Go on and have your fun. Just don't be late." he let their hand fall away as he relaxed back into bed, content to return to unconsciousness.

Lips press to his temple and they mumble "Wait for me, even if I am?" even though it's a question, Durge disappears without hearing the answer. They don't need to. They know.

"Lord Gortash? Sir?" Enver is pulled from his thoughts and glances to the man from the window he was pretending to gaze out of.

He puts on an easy smile, "Yes, Cleric Novek?"

"Its quite late now, would it be okay... if I...?" were the words he spoke with a gesture to the door.

Gortash has a look around his chambers: The candles were beginning to burn out, both of their favorite foods laid out in a spread (which only the Cleric nibbled on), a few bottles of wine, some opened, some empty, a simple little cake, but their favorite flavor, and a pair of elaborate, matching rings in his palm.

"Of course." Enver said nothing more and turned back to the dark night beyond his window.

The Cleric's footsteps echoed off the regal walls of his room for just a moment too long. He was silent until he reached the door;

"I'm sorry... truly." but Enver didn't feel sorry. He didn't feel much of anything as he spoke.

"Don't be. They're just late."

[pouletpourri]

more of that "kaufmo didn't get abstracted" AU

[verc0pa]

drawing this genuinely got me out of art block💀

[abyssalzones]

it's fine it's not like these things get worse with age or anything

[fallout-lou-begas]

if tarantulas are so dangerous then how come

?

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[mightyjane]

@swsource​ star wars week: day 5 – don't make me nickname you clones & chosen names

no guarantee or ambition for absolute completeness

[saturnvs]

babies :)

[zipsunz]

saturday morning cartoons 🥣

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[beebundt]

thinking a little too much abt durge/orin sibling relationship rn. 🩸ft. my durge (briar, they/them)

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

I'm not sure why crispy chickpeas aren't everywhere as like a top ADHD snack because they are:

Delicious (so you will actually seek them out/want to eat them)

Crispy (a good stim for texture people)

Easy to make (super hands off, they just roast for like 30 minutes while you do something else)

Healthy (it's literally just beans! Such protein!)

Versatile (you can switch up the seasonings if you get tired of one flavor; you can also put them on/in a bunch of different dishes)

Cheap AF & forgiving of your timeline (a can of chickpeas won't go bad in your pantry if you don't have the energy to make something with them this week)

So here's the resippy.

Cooked chickpeas (I usually use one can)

Olive oil

Salt

Paprika or curry powder or rosemary or your favorite spice (optional)

Steps:

Drain and rinse your chickpeas.

Dump them onto a towel or paper towel and rub them dry a bit.

Remove any loose skins. If you're feeling extra you can remove all the skins; this makes them slightly crispier. I do not find this to be worth it.

Put them on a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper if you want to save yourself some cleanup). Toss with a drizzle of olive oil, a generous pinch or two of salt, and your seasoning.

Roast in your oven. I usually do 400°F for about 25-30 minutes, but this is pretty forgiving and you can do 425 for 20 minutes or whatever you want to do

Taste a chickpea. It should have an audible crunch. If it doesn't, put it back in until it does

When done, taste for seasoning and add any additional salt or seasoning you want. Proceed to devour them.

These are best fresh, but I still like them later on (if I don't eat them all right away). Store in an airtight container for a couple days at room temp or a few days in the fridge.

Enjoy!!

[ssalballoon]

rot and ruin

this was heavily inspired by thatkorka's lovely fic! please check it out, it's such a good take on Gale's arc :')

[s0up1ta]

i hate them so much

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 36-39)

* To note. Her hands are scaly. * And...unexpectedly wet?

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[0hmanit]

I've been here before